Interview with Santosh Rana

Biswajit Roy

One
of the much talked-about young revolutionary leaders of the undivided
CPI (ML) in Bengal in the seventies and now with of PCC CPI (ML), a
smaller faction of the fractured party, Santosh Rana has emerged as a
major critic of the CPI (Maoist) in the wake of Lalgarh movement. For
him, the popular uprising of the tribal and non-tribal poor against the
police repression in the Junglemahal of West Bengal bordering Jharkhand
had much potential for democratising the local and regional polity with
far-reaching ramifications. But the opportunities were lost after the
Maoists aped the CPM in imposing their one-party rule and killing
opponents irrespective of their class background. Far from considering
the wanton killings now prevalent in Lalgarh region as aberrations of
Maoist revolutionary schema, Rana argued that Maoist denial of
democracy to rivals and friend-turned-foes in their fiefdoms has its
ideo-political roots in the Soviet and Chinese version of proletarian
dictatorship and peoples’ democracy. More concerned about the self-rule
or autonomy for Junglemahal, he believes democratic content of
revolutionary power including guarantee for multi-party polity must be
central to all future revolutions including Indian revolution. Despite
his differences, he is opposed to state repression in Lalgarh and wants
talks between the government and Maoists as well as other
representative of people there. Biswajit Roy, a journalist based in
Calcutta, spoke to him to understand his arguments.

Q:
The growing strength of CPI(Maoist) in a large part of the country
underlines not only the failure of mainstream Left but also other
Naxalite groups. It seems Maoists have established themselves as the
alternative to the parliamentary and constitutional politics of all
hues. How do you look at it?

SR: Since
early nineties, the LPG (Liberalisation-Privatisation-Globalisation)
regimes both at the Centre and the states have been spreading the
tentacles of neo-liberal global economy across the country that
resulted into the concentration of wealth in the hands of 27 super-rich
families. This concentration of wealth has been reflected in the
country’s politics also. Never before Indian parliaments have so manycrorepatis as
its members. With this class background of a sizable section of the
MPs, it was hardly unexpected that none of the 540 MPs had opposed the
draconian Unlawful Activities Prevention Act. Even the mainstream Left
kept mum except feebly suggesting some cosmetic changes.

This has
only reduced the democratic space with the parliamentary system. As the
State and its non-State collaborators are denying people their
constitutional and legal rights, they are turning towards
non-parliamentary paths which can deliver in more direct, immediate and
localized ways. The surge of so-called Maoists should be seen in this
context.

Nevertheless, I must insist that the Maoists’ success is limited to
those parts of central Indian plateau which have forested hilly
terrains with concentration of tribal population. The central and state
governments, run by the parliamentary parties of all hues, have sold
off the mining rights of huge mineral reserve of this region to
multinational and Deshi corporate groups. These capitalists have been
given virtual license to plunder the country’s natural resources
without caring for its adverse impact on the lives of local tribal and
other marginal communities. As the State-corporate nexus is trying to
crush all democratic protests in the affected regions of Chattisgarh,
Maharashtra and Orissa, people turned to armed Maoists for protection
of their traditional rights on Jal-jungle-jamin.

But Maoists could not spread much beyond Dandakaranya region. Even
in
their stronghold Dantewara, they couldn’t ensure the victory of the CPI
candidate, Manish Kunjam. In Andhra, the home-ground for the erstwhile
CPI (ML) People’s War, their model has failed and they are on the run.
I admit they have made inroads in certain areas where democratic
movements are weakest and state-corporate joint repression and denial
of people’s rights are severest. But they failed to offer an
alternative model for the entire country. Consider their roles in
the anti-special economic zone, anti-land grab peasant movements as
well as anti-eviction struggle of the development refugees across the
country. From Kalinganagar in Orissa to Raigarh in Maharashtra and
Nandigram in Bengal Maoists were at the fringe.

Indian State may be considering them as the biggest threat since they
have attacked the state directly. But in reality, both the State and
the so-called Maoists are taking complementary roles in shrivelling the
democratic space.

Q.
Maoists insist on their ideo-political continuity from undivided CPI
(ML) led by Charu Mazumdar. But the CPM and even some of the Naxalite
groups refused to accept it. What is your take on it?

SR: Differences
between the original CPI (ML) and today’s CPI (Maoist) are too many.
Despite our criticism of Charu Mazumdar’s line of annihilation
campaign, I must point out that he never asked us for indiscriminate
killings like today’s Maoists. In 1969-71, I was active in
Debra-Gopiballavpur region, close to Lalgarh, now a major base of the
Maoists. We killed around 120 people, most of them landlords or their
henchmen. In fact, we had not killed even our class enemies till
Charuda complained: Tomra dhan katcho kintu jotdar katcho na (you
are engaged in forcible harvesting to ensure share-croppers and farmers
share but sparing the landlords). Today, I feel most of these killings
were unnecessary. But unlike the CPI (Maoist), we killed not a single
tribal, Dalit and poor people in the seventies in Debra-Gopiballavpur.
Even Charuda insisted not to ‘touch any tribal’, landless
agri-labourers, poor and marginal peasants even if he was opposed to
us. He always asked us not to carry weapons when meeting the peasants.
He wanted us to kindle the poor people’s class consciousness first and
depend on their initiative and the weapons they use for armed actions.

Secondly, Charuda’s focus was always on the class struggle and class
issues. In the seventies, we began our work not in forest areas like
Nayagram, Binpur or Lalgarh but mainly in densely populated
Debra-Gopiballavpur along the bank of Subarnarekha river where class
contradictions were sharp over land and wage questions. We endeared
ourselves to poor peasants and landless by focusing on land issues as
well as exploitation by the money-lenders. In contrast, today’s Maoists
have forgotten the land questions. They have not redistributed a single
bigha land to any landless so far in Belpahari-Bashpahari-Lalgarh
region now under their control. For them, land reform is over in West
Bengal. The Maoist-controlled People’s Committee against Police
Atrocities failed to mention the land issues in their 13-point charter
of demands.

Q.
But then how do you explain the Maoist success in garnering the mass
support in the Lalgarh area and their increasing presence in
Junglemahal of western Bengal adjoining Jharkhand? Do you subscribe to
the CPM’s views that the Maoists are a gang of criminals who compelled
locals to follow their dictate at the point of guns?

SR: No,
I don’t agree with the CPM. Before the CPI (Maoist) was born in 2004,
its two constituents, MCC and Peoples War were active in different
pockets of the Junglemahal for more than a decade. They have garnered
support among the tribals by taking actions against the corruption and
exploitation of theKendu leaf contractors and
their nexus with the forest officials. But they didn’t opt for
organising sustained movements on issues relevant to the tribals and
other poor people of Junglemahal.

For
example, 75 per cent of the sale proceeds of commercial forest
products, mainly timber go to the government exchequer under the
government’s joint forest management project. Only 25 per cent of the
proceeds are earmarked for the Gramrakhsa committee which comprises the
villagers close to the forest. But in practice, the corrupt officials
line their pockets with both the government and villagers’ money. The
Jharkhand Samannaya Manch of which we are a part had offered the
Maoists to join hands to launch a movement demanding the lion’s share
of the proceeds for the villagers. We could have begun a movement
against the corruption of panchayat bodies which now handle huge amount
of government money earmarked for skews of tribal welfare and rural
development projects. These are all popular issues that affect the
everyday lives of millions. The gram sabhas and gram sansads, the in-built mechanism integral to the panchayati raj are aimed at
public accountability and popular participation of people at the
grass-root level. They are largely dysfunctional as the corruption,
nepotism, clientism and narrow politicking by the CPM and other
mainstream parties have alienated people. We could have begun with some
innovative ideas to redeem these grass-root institutions by ensuring
genuine popular control and more power to people after the CPM lost
Lalgarh Panchayat Samiti and most of the gram panchayats there. But the Maoists refused to listen to us.

Nonetheless, some of the CPI (ML) groups like CPI (ML) New Democracy
and different factions of the Jharkhand Party had participated in
the mass uprising against the police atrocities in November 2008 and
later joined in the Maoist-controlled PCPA. The explosion of people’s
pent-up anger against police repression triggered a genuine mass
movement. The police and bureaucracy’s attitude has hardly changed
since the Raj days as they refused to treat tribal and other poor in
Junglemahal as human beings and fellow citizens of Independent India.
Illegal detention, arbitrary arrests, merciless beating, harassment and
intimidation of women and children, nocturnal raids and search
operations in villages became the order of the day since the MCC and
PWG had renewed their activities in the region. The repression reached
its peak after the government ordered night-raids in the villages of
Lalgarh block following the Maoist attempt on chief minister Buddhadeb
Bhattacharjee’s life on 2 November on his way back from Shalboni.
Maoists detonated the popular fury.

With
the wounds of Nandigram still fresh, the CPM and state administration
cowered before the people’s might and the government withdrew eight
police camps from Lalgarh area in mid-November. It was a great victory
of the people. The movement was pregnant with many possibilities as it
started spreading beyond Lalgarh. There was an opportunity to mobilise
the awakened masses for establishing the organs of democratic self-rule
and launching a movement for autonomy for Junglemahal, for that matter,
entire Western Bengal. For seven months, there was no police in the
area and the Maoist-backed PCPA ruled without any opposition. The CPM
lost its base in Dharampur after the Lok Sabha polls. Angry over the
corruption and high-handedness of the local CPM party satrap Anuj
Pandey and his family, local people, assisted by Maoist squads,
demolished Pandey’s palatial house in Dharampur. Such was the
people’s fury that even the CPM leaders couldn’t defend the
Pandeys. But this emboldened the Maoists so much that they flaunted
their assault rifles in front of the TV cameras on the very day and
made the PCPA irrelevant by announcing they were leading the movement.
This only helped Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee to abandon all his
Left and federalist pretension and join hands with P Chidambaram in
unleashing the Centre-state joint security crackdown in Lalgarh, thus
unleashing another phase of state terror against the people of
Junglemahal.

On
the other hand, CPI (Maoist) steamrolled all the other voices in the
PCPA, denied democracy to any other political force which was opposed
to their schema and established their one-party rule by replacing the
CPM’s version of it. They have killed around 200 since last June.
Though they have not killed other Naxalites so far, they didn’t spare
many of their former friends including members and supporters of
different factions of the Jharkhand party.

Q.
It seems to be a blame game continued among former comrades. You said
Maoists killed friendly Jharkhandi leaders while they accused them of
being police moles and CPM’s collaborators in killing their cadres and
supporters. They particularly named Jharkhand Jana Mukti Morcha-led
Gana Pratirodh Committee, one of your allies, as the part of the CPM’s
version of Salwa Judum campaign in Bengal. According to them, many of
the Jharkhandi faction leaders have morphed into political mafias and
amassed wealth and power by collaborating with anti-tribal, anti-people
forces. A mere adivasi surname can’t conceal their real class loci and
save them from people’s wrath.

SR: I have
no major difference with them on the analysis of class character of
Jharkhandi leaders in general. We have a long relation of unity and
struggle with Jharkhand factions as we have participated in the
struggle for a separate Jharkhand in tune with the undivided CPI(ML)’s
position to support the struggle for self-determination of
nationalities in different parts of India. We have articulated the
demand for an autonomous council for tribal-dominated Western Bengal
which we consider the part of Jharkhand cultural sphere, historically
different from rest of Bengal. The Jharkhandi groups had a presence
and influence among the local people long before the Maoists
became active here. It is wrong to stigmatise any Jharkhand leader or
group which is opposed to the Maoist schema. In fact, Maoists have not
only alienated traditional tribal social organizations and their
leadership, but also humiliated them and even killed some of them.

Among the tribals, Santhals were the main force behind the November
uprising but the other communities like Mundas and Mahatos also joined
the struggle. The Bharat Jakat Majhi Marwah, a body of the traditional tribal headmen, was in the forefront of the movement in the beginning. The Majhi Marwah had
entered into negotiation with the Bengal administration in the initial
stage of the anti-police movement and agreed to withdraw the blockade
after the government conceded some demands and agreed not to launch any
night-raids in villages. The Maoists did not agree and criticised the
Marwah leaders as sell-outs. But the terms and conditions of the later
PCPA agreement with the government were more or less the same. The
Maoist-led PCPA even issued a leaflet announcing the trial of the Majhi Marwah head Nityananda Hembrom in a ‘people’s court’. They also ordered those who live in the areas under the influence of Majhi Marwah to join a PCPA procession and beat up those who had defied it.

We think the differences with Majhi Marwah and
other Jhankhadi forces that had joined the movement could have been
sorted out in a democratic manner. The Maoists swear by Mao Tse Tung.
Didn’t they learn from him on how to handle the non-antagonistic
contradictions? The killing of Sudhir Mandi was another example of
maiming a dissenting voice among the people by labelling him a class
enemy. Mandi, a Jharkhand leader, was a poor peasant having one acre of Dahi or infertile land. Despite being a former chairman of Belpahari panchayat samiti for five years, he used to stay in a traditional kuccha house with a thatched roof. He was killed by the Maoists when he had gone for selling the Sabui grass,
collected by poor people for making ropes. This killing created major
split among the locals. Regarding the CPI (Maoist) complaints about our
allies, JJMM had denied the charges of killing of PCPA or Maoist cadres
and any relation with Gana Pratirodh Committee. The Morcha agreed
to our proposal for an independent enquiry into these complaints by the
civil rights and democratic movement activists. The CPI(Maoist)
cold-shouldered the proposal and continued killing anybody who crossed
their path.

Q. In your exchange of
open letters with the CPI (Maoist) leadership, the eastern bureau of
its central committee has complained that your Jharkhandi allies were
actually trying to enjoy a piggy-back ride on the people’s movement to
fulfill their electoral ambitions while maintaining clandestine
relation with the CPM. For example, Aditya Kisku, the leader of a
Jharkhand party faction whom you and two other CPI (ML) groups
supported in the Lok Sabha polls in Jhargram constituency.

SR: It
was the CPI (Maoist) leader like Kishenji who in his newspaper
interview (Times of India, 2009) admitted having collaborated with the
CPM against the Trinamul-BJP combine when both sides had been engaged
in a bloody turf war in the Keshpur-Garbeta region in the late
nineties. In his bid to reprimand the CPM minister and local party
satrap, Sushanta Ghosh for his ingratitude, Kisenji even boasted that
he had collected 5000 rounds of cartridges from the CPM office at that
time. It was another matter that their briefbonhomie with
the CPM ended soon after and a new relationship began with the
Trinamul. Coming to the parliamentary polls in May 2009, CPI (Maoist)
hinted that they might consider support if there was a single candidate
against CPM. We tried to convince Chunibala Hansda of JKP (Naren)
faction for a united fight but she, being the Congress ally, refused.
We supported Aditya Kisku since he stood for autonomy for western
Bengal for long. But CPI (Maoist) called for a vote boycott and stopped
voters from casting their votes in 75 booths where Kisku had a support
base. On the other hand, they asked people to vote for
Congress-supported Hansda in other booths. The CPM won by 293,000
votes, the highest victory margin in Bengal despite the Left front’s
worst-ever poll debacle in the state. The Maoists can claim a certain
share of this achievement of the ruling party.

Q.
The Maoists are describing the ruling Marxists as ‘social fascists’ and
have practically declared the entire party rank and file enemies of
people. They argued that CPM and the government led by it have become
stooges of foreign and deshi corporate capital and an outright
anti-people regime after Singur and Nandigram. Their anti-CPM virulence
didn’t stop at polemics or political battles but unleashed a killing
spree particularly after the Centre-state joint operation had begun. In
fact, most of the victims of Maoist wrath are CPM cadres and
supporters. The CPI (Maoist) politburo member Kisenji told me they
corrected Mazumdar’s singular focus on annihilation of class enemies
and carried the killings along with mass movement in Lalgarh and
elsewhere. According to him, there is no Chinese wall between the
annihilation campaign and mass movement. He denied the charge of being
blood-thirsty and insisted all the death sentences were passed by the
people’s court. He said he was considered soft-hearted in his party. He
told me they have killed only 50 per cent of those who should have been
killed and on some occasion his deputies like Bikash persuaded
villagers not to award capital punishment to class enemies.

SR: This
indiscriminate butchering of CPM and other political party workers is
totally unacceptable. Kisenji claimed that old feudalism is extinct in
Bengal and the CPM rank and file now represent the new feudal class.
This is ridiculous. Majority of CPM party members in Bengal belong to
the poor and toiling people by their class background. It is dangerous
to declare them as class enemies on the basis of their political
allegiance. It has no relation with Marxism-Leninism and Mao Tse Tung
thought but with Fascism. If this Fascist politics wins in Lalgarh, the
future of democratic movement will be doomed. We strongly believe that
political differences cannot be sorted out by killing the political
rivals or evicting them from their homes. If we want to fight against
the corruption, arrogance and nepotism of the CPM leaders andpanchayat functionaries,
their killing can’t be the solution. We too consider today’s CPM as the
stooge of the forces of globalisation and the main agency of
police-party joint repression on people. But to call them social
fascists for the last 30 years will lead us to deny the achievement of
limited land reforms and operation Barga to protect the rights of
share-croppers as well as implementation of Panchayati raj. We
have to admit the fact that first two Left front governments had made
some democratic reforms that today’s Lalgarh would not have happened
without operation Barga. Secondly, we must be objective. Unlike the
mineral-rich areas of Chattisgarh, Orissa and Jharkhand, Left front
government in Bengal so far didn’t acquire land or notify for it to
facilitate mineral extraction by private corporations in Jhargram
sub-division. The government allotted vested land to Jindal group’s
steel plant in Shalboni. But the PCPA’s original charter of demands
didn’t ask for closing up that project. They could have objected to the
government’s decision to allot vest land to the corporate sector
instead of distributing it to the landless or without consulting the gram sabhas and gram sansad.
They didn’t. In fact, there is protest against the project in the area.
We will continue to fight against CPM when it courts big capital,
compromising farmers and peoples’ interests. But it is a gross mistake
to consider the CPM as the enemy number one in the context of national
politics. The party’s opposition to the Indo-US nuclear deal is in tune
to the Left position.

Q. It is
clear that the Maoist project is completely different from yours. They
want to establish their own power base in their liberated zones, in the
process of setting up their parallel state by forcibly replacing the
existing one. So their priorities are different. Kisenji complained you
have lost faith in revolution and now preach a reformed bourgeois
democracy, a more inclusive and publicly accountable parliamentary
democracy, that’s all.

SR: I have not lost
my faith in armed revolution. The existing State apparatus has to be
smashed and a new State has to be established. But I differ with both
the CPM and CPI (Maoist), for that matter, with many other CPI(ML)
groups on the fundamental questions on the nature of the revolutionary
State and role of communist party it. Both the CPM and CPI(Maoist)
practices made it clear that they want to establish their own one-party
rule in the name of peoples’ democracy or proletarian dictatorship. But
we can’t accept it after the Soviet and Chinese experiences. The denial
of democracy, both inside and outside the party, imposition of
one-party state was the main reason for the Soviet debacle. Mao was one
of the greatest thinkers and revolutionaries of 20th century. Even he
couldn’t succeed in safeguarding proletarian dictatorship in China
which has now degenerated into a capitalist heaven. Because the party
dictatorship was consolidated in the name of people’s democracy. There
is no reason to believe anymore that the rule of the communist party is
synonymous with working class rule. For Marx, the Paris Commune was the
embodiment of the proletarian dictatorship in which the representatives
of armed workers and other toiling people, elected on the basis of
universal franchise, replaced the existing State and exercised the
revolutionary power, both legislative and executive. All power to the
soviets was the fundamental call of Russian revolution. I challenge
Stalinism, for that matter, the third international formulations which
had replaced the rule of soviets by the communist party rule that
gradually wiped out all internal and external opposition. Rosa
Luxemburg was one of those few revolutionary thinkers who foresaw the
dangers posed to the Russian revolution because of the denial of
democracy.

Q. In that case, you are
also questioning Lenin. It was he who theorised the seizure of power as
the key question of revolution and emphasised the vanguard role of
the communist party in establishing and securing the proletarian
dictatorship. He was still the supreme leader of the Bolsheviks when the
party outflanked the Mensheviks and Right social revolutionaries to
ensure the passage of revolutionary decrees in the post-October second
congress of soviets, rejected the results of the constituent assembly poll
in which the Bolsheviks were minority, concentrated the power in the
party’s hand and dumped the key allies, Left social revolutionaries.
All power to the soviets became a façade to the Bolshevik rule. Rosa
had debates with Lenin on the fundamental questions of Russian
revolution.

SR: I stand by Lenin’s position
on the key tasks of proletarian revolution as articulated in the State
and Revolution. Seizure of power is the half of Marxism-Leninism. Power
to whom, who will replace whom that was basic question that Lenin
posed. Power to Kisenji and his party instead of Buddhadeb
Bhattacharjee and his party?

Secondly, we have to understand that no revolution in our age will be
successful without addressing the question of democracy. The people of
Russia and China had accepted the party rule in the name of the class
since bourgeois parliamentary democracy was rudimentary or non-existent
in pre-revolutionary Russia and China. The same can’t be repeated in
India where parliamentary democracy, despite its all travesties, has
taken roots down to the villages. Revolutionaries have to move ahead in
India not by shrinking the parliamentary democracy but by expanding it.
For us, the basic question should be more and more power to the people
in order to make the democracy meaningful in the lives of the millions.
And, our acceptance of opposition to the ruling party, freedom of
minority voices must be an integral part of vibrant and participatory
democracy.

Q.
The activists and intellectuals close to the Maoists have pointed out
that no other people than the masses of Lalgarh should decide who would
lead them and it was they who had rejected the parliamentary parties
and accepted the leadership of the CPI (Maoist). The rebels have set up
their own version of people’s power and executing with alternative
development plans with the active participation of the people. So why
grudge it?

SR: There is no democracy in the
so-called people's committees and people’s courts. Kisenji and his party
are just aping the CPM and Trinamul fiefdoms. The Maoists squads
dictate everything in the name of people. Any dissenters will risk
beating, even killing. They are forcing people to join their rally,
extracting tax from them, compelling the supporters of CPM and other
political parties to give undertaking at the point of gun. They have
turned the people of Lalgarh into cannon-fodder. Villagers faced
bullets and one of them died when Maoists clashed with para-military
forces on the day of the blockade of Rajdhani express. Villagers didn’t
know about their plan for the blockade and landed in the soup. Maoists
had to pay Rs 3 lakhs as compensation to the deceased family after the
villagers confronted them. They are in fact following not only the LTTE
military line but also its political line. Prabhakaran had exterminated
all other Tamil groups. In the end, he got exterminated. The Maoist
experiments in alternative development are all sham. They are not
interested in these school, health centre or road-buildings. These are
basically ideas of some city-based sympathizers, attempted
half-heartedly. The region is poor. Where will the money come from for
development? Why don’t they win the panchayat polls and use the
government money with people’s supervision? After all, it’s the
people’s money.

Q. CPM is constantly harping on Maoist-Mamata Banerjee nexus. What is your reaction to it?

SR: Both
sides tried to use each other in sheer opportunism. It happened in
Nandigram earlier. For rhetoric’s sake, Maoists described Mamata as the
part of big-bourgeois state. But in practice, they are soft to Mamata
and her party as the CPM has become their common enemy. Recently Mamata
thundered against the Maoists under the pressure from the Centre and
the CPM. But she offered olive branch to the Maoists few days later.
Kisenji’s open letters to her and sound-bites on television also
revealed the blow-hot blow-cold affair.

Q. Did you ever speak to Kisenji or other CPI(Maoist) leaders to sort out the differences?

SR: I
have tried to speak to him but got no response. I spoke to some other
leaders of the party and got the impression that they didn’t approve
all that he had done. But the party is ultimately responsible for
whatever is going on.

Q. Judging by
your harsh criticism of the CPI (Maoist), it appears that you and your
allies are not opposed to the centre-state joint security operation or
the massive crackdown planned by P Chidambaram.

SR: In
no way do we condone the state repression on the people of Junglemahal as
well as on the Maoists as it will legitimise the designs of the forces
of globalisation and their lackeys in India to turn India into a police
state in the name of internal security and doom the democracy whatever
people of India have achieved. On behalf ofJharkhand Andolan Samannaya Mancha,
we have urged all sides to turn to talk table to resume democratic
atmosphere in Lalgarh and adjoining areas so that Maoists, CPM as well
as other forces can preach their politics without fear of police or
political repression. We want all sides to focus on the development of
the backward region with an elected, publicly accountable autonomous
council at the helm of affairs. People must have the right to recall
their representatives down to the village level.